


Time In A Bottle

by TheRangress (orphan_account)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheRangress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble is that photographs fade as  much as memory. And Jack knows well enough that they can both be stolen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time In A Bottle

The Hub was full of small tins and boxes, with 'Jack's!' scribbled on them.  
This was, of course, a surefire way to get them opened. And so one by one, everyone knew that they were full of letters and photographs.  
For a while, Jack was mocked for his agelessness and mustache, and he would smile, promise he'd never try to grow facial hair again, and put the box back in his desk.  
And then, everybody knew what they really meant.  
For a while, the boxes were never touched.  
Owen was the first to open them again, of course. Tosh smacked it away from his hand, but eventually everyone went back to their old ways.  
A hundred years of teams, a history of fashion and photography and Torchwood and Jack Harkness. A too-brief correspondance with Oscar Wilde. A picture of the Titanic and a man Tosh identified as the Doctor; another of three men Ianto knew were UNIT, another man in ruffles and velvet, and a girl with a broad grin. Weddings and babies and names from the Archives and morgue, signed right there in faded ink.  
“Someday we'll be in these,” Tosh said, closing a lid.  
“Our replacements sneaking around and looking at us, wondering about who we were,” Gwen agreed, thoughts still on a group photograph from the 1950s. Whose roles had they taken on?  
“Cheery lot, aren't you?” said Owen, leaning back.  
“Looking up when we died,” Ianto added, standing up and taking the box. It was always him to put it back on Jack's desk. Sometimes he considered putting a note on top, but usually settled for just putting it beside a coffee cup and sometimes a biscuit. “Seeing if they're older than we were.”  
“Just like us,” Tosh said, with a slight squirm. (Often enough— she was.)  
“Poor Jack.” Gwen stared into her coffee cup, wondering how many of those smiling faces had once sat around some table (this table?) having this conversation.  
“Poor me, having to listen to all this sentimental shit,” Owen said. He stood up and left to do nothing in particular.  
(Would he even be there as some future group thumbed through pictures of him with Tosh, Gwen, and Ianto? Didn't seem that unlikely, at this point.)  
“Suzie's in these too,” Gwen said. She tapped her fingers on the table, trying to form a coherent thought.  
“I wonder how many of them were Suzies,” Tosh said, picking up biscuit crumbs with her finger. She focused on that, nothing else. “How can he keep them in there, after...?”  
“He's Jack,” said Gwen, and it made sense. Jack was a confusing, contradictory man. He rarely made sense. The only reason he had— he needed— for these things was that he was Jack. “We should give him a day.”  
“A day?” Tosh asked, looking up from her biscuit crumbs to finally look at Gwen.  
“Yes. A day. None of this Torchwood, just the five of us and a camera. Next time it looks like there aren't going to be any Rift spikes, I'll call Andy and make sure the police don't call us unless it's an apocalypse.”  
“So obviously, that's the day for the Weevil apocalypse.” Tosh grinned, but it softened. “I'll do it.”

2009  
(Day Seven)

Jack Harkness stood in ash and wreckage, glad he was alone.  
He was a strong man, who could endure a hundred years— a thousand, eternity if he had to. And he would not cry. He would not break, not when he'd given up any rights to caring.  
But they were all lumps of congealed metal, ash, and lone scraps. Her eye, a baby's hands. And Jack tried to remember everyone, every name he'd lost.  
He couldn't.  
He knew them— he knew he could remember! If someone said one of the names, he would smile to himself softly and he remembered.  
But like this? They fell away from him like grains of sand.  
“Will I even remember you for a hundred years?” he asked the dust.  
Jack Harkness turned away.  
He would forget on his own terms. He would move on.  
Not let them all be washed away as ash in the breeze. If he walked away, then they'd still be somewhere, whole. Not eroded and destroyed like everything he didn't let go of soon enough.

2011

Gwen brought out a photo album, and Jack's heart leapt.  
“I know it's not enough— not them all,” she said hastily, sitting beside him, “But... I got Alice to add some. It's not much, I know...”  
She opened the book, and Jack smiled. It was that day— when they'd made the most ridiculous poses and found lost parents for shy children and been people, people not Torchwood agents, for one day. Tosh giggling, Owen swinging her up. Ianto was blurry there— Gwen had tapped him and he'd nearly punched her in the face. And then they'd all laughed because good Torchwood instincts, but not quite good enough! They'd all danced in that park, and they were all terrible. The little cafe, and their discreet food fight. Owen had fed his spaghetti to a dog— not a stray, someone's pet. And then thrown the rest into Tosh's hair, one by one, when she reprimanded him. The evening, the night, as they kept on finding one more little bookshop or stray cat. They'd been hopelessly lost at midnight, and decided to make an old lady take a picture of them because of that. Jack brushed his fingers against that one, the one where Ianto's head was on his shoulder. (Jack loved the way he smiled when he was half-asleep.) They looked like... a couple. (Had they been?)  
Tears in her eyes, Gwen turned a page. Lucia. Alice growing up. Stephen. (He hadn't been there for most of the ones of Alice or Stephen. Was he brave enough— strong enough— to see her now?)  
“I know you lost a hundred years,” Gwen said, closing the album and pressing into his hands, “But I think there's enough room in here for the start of the next hundred. I don't know enough about computers to tell you if there's any hope of getting the pictures Tosh uploaded back.” She smiled. “Ianto said they were in case of zombie apocalypse.”  
“Been there, done that.” Jack smirked and flipped through the empty pages.  
“And— there are graves, aren't there?” Gwen beamed earnestly, though there were still tears in her eyes. “Better than nothing, at least.”  
“Yeah,” Jack said, turning back to look at the pictures. “Thank you.”

2061

“Daddy, what's this?”  
“It's an old photo album. Careful— give that to me. My friend Gwen gave it to me after I lost all my pictures of my friends.”  
“Did you lose your drive?”  
“This was before those. This is why you're failing history, tiger.”  
“Who are those people?”  
“Those are my friends. That's Gwen, that's Owen, that's Tosh, and that's Ianto.”  
“And who's this?”  
“That's Alice, your sister. And way back here— there's you as a baby.”  
“Who's in between?”  
“You just want to stay up late, don't you?”  
“Please, daddy?”  
“Oh, fine. Maybe I'll tell you some history while I'm at it.”


End file.
